The typist was on vacation the last two weeks of August, bumbling around the real-life Pacific Northwest on foot, by bike, by car, and by ferry. Oh, and by air, in that weird, awkward, and slightly intrusive way they fly in “real life.” So she missed the excellent “Exploring Second Life” meme started by Strawberry Singh.

On her return, she was prompted to approve (or re-approve after an update, maybe) this old trackback about Steelhead by Inara Pey, which referenced this post about Steelhead Shanghai.

Steelhead itself is the commercial centre for the community. here you’ll find the train station, stores and wide streets and the town hall, wherein a weekly meeting of residents is held to discuss community matters. To the west of this is Steelhead Shanghai, a fascinating “Sino-steampunk” region which brought to mind photos I’ve seen of the Hong Kong harbour front circa the 1920s (although Hong Kong admittedly never had dirigible junks sitting on the waterfront).

via Nouveau steampunk with a rural seasoning | Living in the Modem World.

There have been a lot of changes in Steelhead lately, mostly to do with the complete rebuild of Steelhead City by TotalLunar Eclipse after losing the old sim to a previous owner, then purchasing a former Armada sim to repurpose.

The biggest recent change, though, is that Shanghai is no more: Mr Lunar announced about 10 days ago that the sim would have to be sent below the waves due to low rental occupancy. 2 major renters had had to give up their parcels in the last year, and even with a breathtakingly beautiful rebuild in the central plaza, new tenants never appeared. There’s now open water where all of this once stood:

 

This was a dance from a few years ago – someone built a gorgeous sky junk and of course that was where the weekly dance was built. I took several different shots under different Windlight settings.

 

And finally, the Sharknado! Shanghai party, held on the docks nearest Shanghai, which included TWO (2!) sharknados, many sharks, and lots of fun, which ended up being covered by Bixyl Shuftan in the Second Life Newser.

This image is taken from the far side, looking back over Shanghai and towards the sharknados:

More Sharknado! images:

Meanwhile, At Home in Steelhead (which is the new group tag to replace the “Steelhead Settlers” one), last night’s Friday dance feature Men! In Kilts! and lots of great Celtic-inspired rock, courtesy of DJs Fuzzball Ortega and Willow Leafstorm, via Krypton Radio. The Friday night dances we’re always going on about in Steelhead are generally DJed by Marshal Fuzz, as he has a regular gig those nights on what I think is the only science fiction and superhero-powered Internet radio station in the ‘Verse.

Last night’s venue for the dance took place on an AVAILABLE PARCEL IN ST HELENS (SLurl HERE) located not far from Miss Lumina Elvehjem’s new shop location (she was relocated here after the closure of Steelhead Shanghai). Miss Lumi makes wonderful fantasy-based clothes – I own two of her yummilicious saris – and her shop is now located here (SLurl). For the party last night, she provided the mysterious ivy-covered stone circle on the otherwise empty parcel, complete with firepit, dance balls, and a couple of vendors loaded with men’s formal and informal kilts and a women’s “miniskirt” kilt, all in the Steelhead tartan colors. The vendors were still there when I stopped by on Saturday to do a quick photo shoot of me in my REDONKULOUSLY CUTE NEW DINKIES KITTY AVATAR, which I picked up on a whim.

I own a Wynx Tinies Siamese kitty AV that I’ve loved forever that I was wearing with a prim kilt. I’d retartaned it with the Steelhead tartan and noticed that some of my head prims were kind of weird looking close up. I started wondering what mesh kitties there might be out there, and behold, TEH CUTENESS OVERWHELMS:

I added a mauve “Arabian Nights” outfit with a flexi-prim skirt made for this avatar, which was the nearest thing to a kilt and not all that different from some of the sexxay ladies’ kilt outfits that were on display last night. And a little prim hair originally meant for a petite that I found in a hunt, which has a resize script that makes it about the right size for my adorably oversized mesh head. Then I realized that I could add any reasonably sized accessory, so I put on a choker that was a gift from my friend Cady Enoch.

Miss Lumi’s partner Thadicus Caligari is the maker of the men’s kilts, while Lumi is the maker of the sexxay ladies’ one. As I was already tiny I didn’t want to go hoomin again so soon to wear the ladies’ one, so… I went shawpin’ for the mesh kitty AV and an outfit, and this was the result.

As I said, redonkulous. I notice that the maker has made simple templates available for making mesh outfits, and there aren’t any historical ones at all by her or the other merchant who’s making cute things for Dinkies Kitty avatars. So I may play around with that!

That is, if I can stop dancing. I clicked on Miss Lumi’s Huggles attachment, which is loaded with an awesome assortment of group dances (and even a “mark time” movement for when the music isn’t playing), and no matter how I click on “stop animation” or remove/turn off other AO’s, I simply can’t stop dancing. Which is no bad thing, since this little kitty LOVES TO DANCE apparently, though it looks a bit weird to see myself as a winsome little kitty with my grownup lady stands, walks, and dances. So I may have to play with other AOS to load up the onboard AO with appropriate walks; the AV comes with a simple attachment that has a special walk and groundsit. I have a clockwork geisha one from Curio Obscura that has a pretty cute little walk, and the turning animation is clocky good fun, too. So I’m playing around with that, too.

Finally, I ended up back with Firestorm after several weeks with Kokua. I did dip a toe in the “export prim linkset as mesh” last week with Kokua, but couldn’t figure out what to do with it once I got it into Blender in order to optimize it. Meanwhile, I missed the Windlight settings button, and the photo controls, while I didn’t care for the CHUI-based chat functions in Kokua much at all. So I’ll stick with Firestorm, and I did end up getting one of their 3rd-birthday special celebration gifts from KittyCats.

Because like I said, redonkulous. His name is Ember, and I never have to feed (or breed) him. I got Dash out of inventory and set them to running around together; Dash is a permapet now and a bit creaky, but they seem to be good company.

I’m working on some older texture change hats that I never got uploaded to the Marketplace before I lost momentum last spring, so I’m now getting some product display images of them and thinking how cute they’d look on this little cat. More on that later.